The poem "A City's Death by Fire" by Derek Walcott is a semi-autobiographical poem, a memoir of the great fire of 1948 in Central Castries ( the capital and largest city of St. Lucia). The Great Fire attacked three-quarters of the city and left more than 2,000 people homeless. This catastrophic event affected Walcott's life, because he was born in Central Castries. Walcott first describes the city's situation with helplessness and despair, but then realizes that one must not lose faith after the physical world has failed to survive. Through this poem, Walcott conveys his theme that faith should not be a help in the man-made world, but rather be maintained in the immunity of nature through the use of figurative language, diction, imagery, and juxtaposition. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Throughout the poem, Walcott uses figurative language to reflect the desperation and demolition caused by the Great Fire of 1948. The speaker speaks of “faiths broken like a thread” as he felt betrayed by the false immunity he believed existed in city buildings. This simile expresses that sudden loss of hope that Walcott had felt since the fire. He also mentions the situation when the poem was written “under the eye of a tearfully smoking candle.” While this provides an understanding of what was literally left behind by the fire, the tearful expression the candle's eye smoked also reflects the pain and desperation felt by the residents. The amount of devastation caused by the fire is contained in the title itself: “A City's Death by Fire”. The city is personified as it is said to have the ability to die. Although a city, a nonliving organism, cannot literally die, the personification represents what is literally and emotionally left of the city. The city is emotionally dead due to the great hope everyone lost after the fire. Since all the trust of the residents has been lost, there is a loss of life in the city. Walcott then develops the idea of ​​the physical death of the city by describing the physical destruction caused by the fire. During his recollection of walking through the chaos, he vividly describes the “razed” buildings, “debris” land, and “destroyed” homes that were left destroyed by the fire. His rich use of concrete diction effectively portrays the dark and painful image of the city. His diction to describe the city reveals the severity of the amount of demolition the fire had left residents. In addition to describing the emotional effects of the fire through literary devices and literal demolition through diction, Walcott also communicates the fire's lack of impact. about nature through his extensive use of images. He begins the poem by referring to the firestorm as the "hot gospeller." This metaphorical comparison suggests that the fire spread as quickly as a preacher would spread the Gospel. The fire spread rapidly and destroyed the "wooden world", but left the "church sky" unscathed. This suggests that the sky was like the untouchable church and was not affected by the fire. Religious imagery continues to pervade the poem as the hills are compared to “flocks of faith.” This comparison suggests that the hills were also untouched by the fire just as the sky was. The religious imagery present throughout the poem suggests that the fire was almost a biblical catastrophe, but it also conveyed an apparent message about a sense of faith that resonated in the perseverance of nature. In=1816688)